a breath, look up, and, without apology, dream really big and bold. I promise I’ll make this step and exercise as entertaining and thoughtful as I have the capacity to: you will not only rise above the road to nowhere on which you’ve been stalled, but you’ll also learn a lot about yourself—good and bad—along the way. This is all about living in the now, at your maximum creative and thoughtful threshold. This is all about making every precious day matter—getting out of your own way, because you never know when today might be the last day you’ll have the freedom to start fresh and try again tomorrow.
Speaking of freedom...I live in America, “the land of the free, and home of the brave,” to quote “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Over the course of my life, I’ve grown to be brave enough to celebrate my freedom to follow my passions and survival instinct, from acting, dancing, and music, to “Wang’ing” office work at the MTA, slinging hash in restaurants, working in publishing, and now, to being my own boss.
#It’s not hard, but it takes a lot of work to go from
Point A (working as a temp) to Point B (owning a company).
If you’re lucky enough to live in a free society with a boundless ceiling for success, why not work that luck to your advantage? Are you squandering your freedom and losing an opportunity to dream big and act bold because the idea of taking a risk is too painful to contemplate? OK, so you might have had a rotten childhood and a wasted adolescence. Stop blaming your parents, your teachers, or the government. Get over the obstacles in your path, and start taking the leaps to make your ideas matter now. If you want something here and now, put on your adult diapers and stop dribbling. And if you’re a Millennial, for God’s sake, stop playing the entitled victim—that role has already been filled with the hippie-dippy set who never were able to fit into society because they smoked way too much weed. Defy your generation and act older (and bolder) than your age so that you can get out of your own way and aspire to greatness. Hang in there! If your bright ideas have merit, you’re gonna do really, really well because people will take notice.
Here’s a thought: so what if your big dream tanks? So what if you fall flat on your face? Remember my washed-up recording career? I had the guts to miss those flying beer bottles in the UK—use that visual as a way to keep your ass on the straight and narrow. If you can visualize glass flying towards you, I promise that all of a sudden you’ll be awake, alive, and animated enough to get out of the way! If you’re in a situation you know is used up—let’s say living at home with a lot of unnecessary control over you, or sitting there later in life on the unemployment line—the first step to getting out of your own way is really to just get up, get cracking and rekindle your inner zhuzh! Yes, it is as easy as that. Get up. Get out. Sing another song, for Christ’s sake! I don’t want you to be strapped into a wheelchair at eighty, wondering “what if” you had done this or that when you were younger—or, worse, regretting that you didn’t try something simply out of fear. Do you?
#Go cold turkey and change your attitude immediately.
Yes, it’s easy.
A few years ago, I was naked, doubled over in tears (in the shower!), afraid that my business was tanking. At the time of this personal implosion, my company was more than six years old, and it was the first time that not just one, but four clients reneged on their payments, and the first time I sent customers to “collections.” Talk about fear: I entered into the first quarter of the next year with only a four thousand dollar float and four employees to pay. Trust me when I tell you, it’s not that attractive for a guy with a shaved head to cry in the shower—but it can be very cathartic. At that guttural moment, I was forced to come to terms with my fear: What would be the worst thing that could happen if my business crumbled? As my pity party subsided, I came to realize there was absolutely nothing to worry about. Really.
It’s not that my business isn’t vulnerable to suffering down years. Nearly every business is. But my waterworks of panic got in the way of thinking clearly, which paid off big time. To get a grip on this ground zero moment, all I needed to do was “stop,” take a breath,” and visualize rock bottom and come to grips with whether or not it’s as bad as it could be.
#If the bottom of the barrel isn’t so bad,
why spend unnecessary minutes waddling down yonder?
Yes, my business could indeed close down without notice (you’ve gotta have a huge dose of humility when you own a digital and PR company), but I realized that what could potentially be a catastrophe for others wasn’t, for me, that horrible after all. If my company crashed, I came to the lightbulb moment of clarity: the worst thing that could happen is that I would have to sell my home, rent a studio apartment (perhaps with a roommate or two), and become a waiter again—something I actually loved doing from time to time before my work in publishing.
#Boo-hoo. I might have to sell my home in favor of renting.
Why isn’t this fallback career as bad as it sounds? The bottom line: exercise and cold, hard cash! When you wait on tables, you literally work your ass off running a marathon during your shift. It’s no secret that the good waiters leave every day with a wad of tips—as opposed to accumulating cellulite sitting in an office waiting for a headhunter to call. Realizing that my rock bottom wasn’t so rocky after all, I was able to squelch a fear that had been holding me hostage—for years. I tricked my brain into thinking that fear of failure was an impetus to do a better job.
#Bawling over the fear of having to
kiss my business goodbye was a time-suck.
#Landlords and banks don’t care where the
mortgage or rent comes from—it just needs to be paid.
Sophia was a friend who moved from the Dominican Republic to the US, trying to rebuild the same career she had in her homeland in her new land. She spent a lot of time mourning the fact that she had lived the high life back home but had nothing to show for it now. What Sophia didn’t grasp at first was that, thanks to the Internet, she could indeed keep some of her fancy clients from her hinterland and still work with them virtually while founding a new frontier. Her rock bottom moment forced her to realize:
#Instead of mourning that one door was closing,
with the Internet she could open BOTH doors and
let clients come in from all over.
To get to that realization, she needed to talk through the fear—out loud—with a trusted friend: me. As a supportive and objective listener, I helped my friend determine what her fear was all about and what the creative alternatives could be. After a few back-and-forths, bantering ideas and strategies with each other, Sophia came to understand that what might seem like a scary storyline in her head was really a bare-bones plot she hadn’t thought through.
#Empty, fearful noises in the brain are deafening.
Getting back to America’s national anthem...on many levels, we really do live freely in a country that’s home to smart, strong, and pretty damn brave people who get ahead, mainly because they are passionate and want to be successful without hurting others on their rise up the ladder. True, some people are snakes who will do anything to stomp on you, squelch your spirit, and hijack the limelight away from you—you all know who you are. With all the websites, cameras, and telemarketers sucking our personal information away from us, it’s really hard to protect your personal and emotional deck of cards without someone wanting to steal your identity. We’re all in a catch-22, because we have to put ourselves out there in order to get something back. When it comes to your dream, my advice would be to let the flood gates open strategically, without sharing your life story with every “nice” person who comes
